Jesse Denaro and Luke Healy of Lakeview have gone from working on roofs and playing Honky Tonks to touring arenas with platinum record boasting rock band Breaking Benjamin. Perched on the edge of a dangerously comfortable sofa in the attic of The Camden Assembly, the duo chatted to MetalTalk about British intruders in their inn, how they once thought country music sucked and what it’s like “living the dream.”
They sold out Manchester. They sold out London. So as we climbed the stairs to join Lakeview in their pre-show room above The Camden Assembly, we dwelled on the fact that this could be the last time we get the chance to catch this country Metalcore act at such an intimate venue. When we mentioned this, Jesse commented, “For our sake, I hope so too,” as, despite their preference for small venues and being close to the crowd, both are now full-time musicians pouring their souls and livelihoods into Lakeview.
Europe was lucky to have Lakeview grace its shores for a headline show since the band have been supporting Breaking Benjamin and Staind on a tour of North America. On how the tour has been going, Jesse said, “A dream come true… One of the first bands Luke actually ever worked for was Staind, so it was kind of crazy to go full circle.”
One of the major differences between touring with Breaking Benjamin and Staind and their European headline tour was the size of the venues. “Where you can’t reach out and actually touch anybody, it was strange to us,” said Luke. Of course, since they brought up touching the crowd, we had to know what kind of crowd shenanigans we could expect them to get up to later that night: “Oh yeh, we will be grabbing everyone; everyone can expect that.”
Another UK treat for Lakeview was the variety of Airbnbs they frequented; their London accommodation was a sketchy but comfortable 500-year-old Inn in Twickenham. After an entertaining back and forth on the pronunciation of Twickenham, Luke told us that not only had they been struggling to sleep due to jet lag, but that the bartender walked right into their room last night while they were all sleeping. In true British fashion, she “didn’t really give a shit” and just walked out, not evening offering them an apology drink the following morning.
Continuing to discuss their UK experiences, Luke said, “Manchester was amazing last night. It was unbelievable. Probably in the top 10 best shows of my life.” With Manchester a candidate for the top 10 best shows ever, London had its work cut out to make up for the middle-of-the-night room intrusion and beat the Mancunian rowdy energy. “It was like they needed that show. You could feel the second you walked in that they were just so ready to have a good time.”
“We literally had every vibe in that room, and that was always a dream. We had some mosh, and we could have probably got the crowd surfers going, but there was…” Jesse then finished Luke’s sentence, “nowhere to put them.” Having nowhere to put potential crowd surfers because of how packed and excited the crowd was, just “made everything worth it,” Luke continued, “because it took a lot of work getting to that point.”
Speaking of hard work, we wanted to know their ambitions for Lakeview: “I mean, the ambition is this, this is it. We just wanted to write music that connected with the working class of the world. It wasn’t about trying to put Jesse and me on a pedestal, trying to be rockstars or anything like that. We started this after we were done doing music in our lives. And we just wanted to provide something for people, like a support line.”
We asked what their support lines were growing up, and, unsurprisingly, music was the most substantial support for both musicians. “Whether I was the one playing the show or attending the show, whether it was playing music at church or whatever it was, for that little piece of time during your shitty week, everything just stopped hurting, and all the stress kind of went away. So that’s what we sing about; that’s the whole point. 
“The only reason we fucking do this. I think there’s gonna be a lot of people here tonight that are going through some shit, and we want to provide, with Pip [Marsh] ‘s help, a couple of hours of ‘don’t think about it, just come’ vibes, have a good time, get drunk and…”
“…just party,” continued Luke. “There are so many times I can look back on my life, and I could be working on a roof or pouring steps for someone’s house, and no matter what, I always had a radio playing and country music was always on that radio. Even when I thought country music sucked (there were a lot of years where I thought country music sucked).”
We sucked in a horrified breath and then tried not to laugh as Luke went on, “But country was the backbone of the work day that, at moments, didn’t make you feel like you’re just killing yourself and working away for nothing. It gave a soundtrack to the working class, and I needed that to get through the days.
“The first tool we grabbed was our fucking radio to turn that shit on. For us to be a part of that for somebody else is massive because I’ve been there my whole life. To finally be on just this side of it, it’s kind of crazy to me.”
On a headline tour with multiple sold-out nights and over 115 million streams of their album catalogue across platforms, Lakeview is booming out of radios worldwide and providing countless listeners with a soundtrack to get through the working day. Their success has enabled both musicians to go full-time with the band, a “fucking awesome” but “scary” transition.
“You work so hard your whole life to achieve something, and it’s so much easier to not achieve it and just dream about it because then you can’t fail. But the second you start to achieve it, you’re like, oh shit, this could go away. It [becoming full-time] kind of changed the motivation, not how hard we work but how smart we work. There’s less time and energy to waste. We’re just fucking blessed.
“I mean, we’re in fucking London playing music at a sold-out show. People know the fucking words, and it’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Regardless of how stressful it was to get here or how much money we’re losing being here, it doesn’t fucking matter. There’s gonna be 200 people in here screaming their fucking heads off, and I’ll do this shit every night.” The thought going through my head was: I can’t wait to scream my fucking head off for you, Jesse. 
Luke continued, “You gotta push the gas to the floor now. Before, you could always fall back on your job a little bit. When you make that transition, you gotta really lean into it and not take anything for granted.”
We grilled Jesse and Luke for their advice on overcoming thoughts of wanting to give up when something seems too hard. “It’s all statistics at the end of the day,” said Jesse, “if you take enough shots, it’s gonna happen. So, as long as you beat out the person next to you, that’s all that really matters. Because that’s the only difference between somebody who makes it and somebody who doesn’t: one person stopped, and one person kept going.
“In a world where everything is so fucking loud, like for Luke and me living in Nashville, it’s this insular echo chamber of who’s the new cool guy from TikTok, who’s this new band, and it’s all the talk of the town. For us, we never really gave a fuck about it. We just put our metaphorical horse blinders on and keep our fucking heads down.
“Nothing good comes easy, and nothing easy is worth it.”
“Support other people but focus on your shit,” advised Luke, “and don’t let other artists get in the way of that; have confidence in yourself. There’s a ton of really awesome talent out there, but work ethic will always beat talent…” then in perfect unison, Jesse and Luke said, “…every day.”
Countrycore, country rock, blue-collar country Metalcore… Lakeview’s sound is hard to nail down, but that’s precisely why it is so brilliant: their fresh take on country and Metal hits a desirable spot for many. “You can’t fake either of them [country or Metal]. It’s hard to cosplay as a country person or as a Metal person,” Jesse explained why the two genres work so well together. “The fans can really sniff it out.
“I know, as a fan of Metalcore, I could listen to something and be like, oh, these guys don’t know, they’ve never played a house show for people before. And country music is the same. It’s like you’re thinking about real-life shit. You’re thinking about actual problems, and not every song is about drinking beer and having fun.” We chimed in impulsively with, “But some of them are.” Jesse replied, “Of course.”
Luke followed on, “This shit gets tacky really fast. But the experience of growing up playing shows and touring since we were 16, we understand what connects to an audience. But we also understand what we expect from a band, and there are songs that bands put out where I’m like, man, that could have been so much better. That’s just our opinion, but I think it’s a trustworthy opinion because we played a million shows to nobody.
“We know how to win over five people in a house show to fucking get gas money to make it to the next gig, so that experience is kind of how we determined what made this work.
“I would go see Lamb Of God or work a show for Lamb Of God. And then two days later, I’m working a show for Jason Aldean, and it’s like half the same fucking crowd just wearing different T-shirts, and it’s cool, and there’s nothing wrong with that. 
“You’re not cheating on a genre. I know, coming from the Metalcore scene, how ruthless and fucking elitist they can be, but I’ve never been like that because I’m a fan of music, and I’m a fan of good songs. The UK and Europe actually embrace that even better than the United States; they’re very open-minded. And in that sense, we thought, why wouldn’t this work?
“This is what we would wanna hear. So we’re gonna put this out because I think there’s more people like me than there aren’t.”
Lakeview released their first full-length album in September, and the 18-track self-titled record is not only 56 minutes of country Metalcore eargasms but also “the DNA of who [Lakeview] are.” The duo spent years, four and a half years to be exact, writing these songs and crafting them with friends. The album “takes you through our life and on a journey from the beat. We’re super fucking proud of it.”
Personally unable to choose just one favourite song, we had to ask the lads which was theirs: “I think Luke and I probably have the same favourite song: Dying Breed. It mixes all the heaviness with the country, and if you cut us open, that’s exactly what you’d find.”
Fortunately, Jesse and Luke reassured us that we would not need to wait another four and a half years for the next album. “We wanted to make sure the timing was right and we had the right support. There’s nothing worse than putting out a song, and you know it’s a hit, you know it’ll kill, but you don’t have the support, so no one’s ever gonna hear it. We wanted to be very tactful about how we went about dropping the album and making sure we had the right people around us.”
Jesse Denaro and Luke Healy’s final message to their Lakeview fans was: “Thank you for all your support. We would be nothing without you. Keep your head down and work your fucking ass off; it will pay off. I know it doesn’t feel that way, but it will, I promise you.”
